LIVE

Rip It Up, Issue 16, 1 October 1978, Page 16

LIVE

AneprAftion

The Enemy The Scavengers Sheerlux Auckland University Cafe The Enemy from Dunedin gave their first North Island performance to mixed reactions. About 400 people sampled a good and bad programme, the concrete dance floor, canned beer and incidental violence. A lot of them had a good time, a few got hurt and one of them souvenired a SIOO microphone. The Scavengers, Johnny Volume guitar, Des T drums, Ronnie Recent bass and vocals, with Buster Stiggs (on loan from Reptiles) on second guitar did a pretty professional first set. The audience liked “True Love" and “Mis--ter X” songs which the Scavengers hope to release as a single, and the Enemy liked “Glad All Over” and “Get Me to the World on Time”, Dave Clark 5 and Electric Prunes oldies. They were followed by Sheerlux with punk standards and some Ultravox and Bowie. Roland Kooreen and Graham Schnell on bass and drums form a competent rhythm section, Jimmy Jurecivich distinguishes the band with fine guitar playing. Mai Licious is a truly ghastly vocalist. He can slaughter a song that was good two years ago. By contrast. The Enemy’s whole act is their vocalist. Chris Knox free ranges the stage and audience a grotesque, shambling figure leering under a mohawk head shave delivering an off the cuff manifesto on misogyny and the modern world within a two and a half octave range with weird vibrato. They are unbalanced but impressive. I liked “1978” and “I Can’t Get It Up”. The vocals are overwhelming and Mike Dooley, their sweet little .drummer belongs up the front. Bass player Mick Dawson has a classical background and knows his stuff. Alec Bathgate plays rhythm guitar and, the band is consequently limited by its lack of a strong lead instrument. The Scavengers’ second set was drunken, dirty dancing music. This band can excel at real tough rock ’n’ roll, their own and others. Sheerlux again . . . dull . . . while somebody got done outside. A lot of the audience left. The Enemy were limited to two last songs, “Green Walls”, a song about death ... “I can’t believe it could happen to me," and “Iggy Told Me”, a manic voodoo chant and their piece de la resistance All stops out. The survivors were devastated.

Jewel Sanyo

Easy Street Lion Tavern, Dunedin Easy Street are a six-piece Gisborne band formed eighteen months ago, and for the last twelve of these months they’ve been professional, pounding the North Island pub/club circuit. The members, Mark Barnes (lead vocals), Lennie Lawton (guitar, vocals), Maurice Priestly (guitar, vocals, harp), Dene McLeod (drums), Phil Young (bass, vocals) and lan Fussell (keyboards, vocals), have never played in bands before, but a year on the road has more than made up for that. Dunedin’s Lion Tavern in recent months has been forced by residential pressure to suspend rock bookings, but with a week of Easy Street playing there, rock ’n’ roll is back in the suburbs. It's difficult trying to pigeonhole the band as they play a diversity of well-paced, volatile nonoriginal material drawn from Tom Petty (“Breakdown”), the Motors (“Dancing the Night Away”), the Doors ("Roadhouse Blues”) and Boomtown Rats (“Looking After No. 1”) amongst others. Much of their repertoire is staple pub band boogie designed to get people on their feet and keep them there, but they are slowly accumulating their own songs, two of which, “Suicide Mission” and “Smash Your Television”, they play regularly and hope to feature when Radio With Pictures film them early this month. Easy Street are ambitious but they are more than aware of the realities of pub gigs, the restrictions of playing songs the crowds are familiar with, yet playing with taste to keep people coming back for more. The Lion’s Tavern was jumpin’ and I was more than happy with a few under the belt to get into muscular deliveries of “Roadhouse Blues” and Tom Robinson’s “2-4-6-8 Motorway”. Time will tell if Easy Street can extend themselves beyond the pub scene, and to do that they would need a record contract, something for which they are hopeful, and a wider selection of their own songs. If they can continue their present work rate, something must happen. George Kay